By Ryhaan Shah
I was a panellist at the UG-sponsored forum entitled “Race, Reality and Reconciliation in Guyana”, which was held recently at the Pegasus Hotel.
I stated that while cultural and religious differences had existed in the society, it was the advent of race politics that aggravated the division and brought with it that most egregious element of such conflicts: violence; and that, in Guyana’s case, it is ethnic violence perpetrated by African Guyanese on Indian Guyanese.
I stated: “When the late, great Winnie Mandela said, ‘I am the product of my enemy ’, I knew exactly what she meant. I did not return home in 1997 with any intention of becoming an activist of any kind. But I returned just as the country exploded in another round of post-elections violence, with PNC supporters on the streets and with the violence against Indians – all seen as PPP supporters – which is part of the PNC toolkit.
“I was forced to investigate what was this thing about being Indian – or coolie, as the PNC mobs would have it – that was creating such a problem. As part of that exploration of my Indianness – which I accept as part of my being and with much pride — I began writing letters to the press, and became part of an Indian group of voices that were speaking our truth from our Indian Guyanese perspective….
“This was a new phenomenon – having Indians engaging in public discussion from an Indian point of view. It upsets a lot of people that we articulate our experience and our truth and without apology – so much so that there are attempts to shut us up by continually condemning us as racists; and we are further burdened with the accusation that the racial division in Guyana is entirely our fault.”
In the discussion that followed the panellists’ presentations, a member of the audience – and to much applause — stated that Guyana is the “only place in the world” where race prefixes like “Indo” and “Afro” are used before citizenship identification. I countered that with fact, and pointed out that Martin Luther King Jnr. and President Obama are proudly referred to as Black Americans, and that such prefixes are used in the US, Canada, Britain, Europe, etc. without contention.
While African Guyanese want to take pride of ownership in Black and African achievements elsewhere, it appears they are willing to forgo the race prefix here if it would also make the Indian one invisible.
The attendees were largely African Guyanese, and going by the applause for the comments made by the panellists and audience members, it seems that the preferred national state would be one that forgets the past and favours a mono Guyanese identity sans race and ethnic prefixes. One can only hope that such opinions of forgoing history and respect for human diversity do not inform UG’s education policies.
It is perhaps ironic that it was the non-attendance of the largest minority group — Indian Guyanese — that was a most significant aspect about the forum. Yet, their absence is understandable. In my presentation, I spoke about the cultural marginalisation of Indians in Guyana and the Caribbean that is aimed at making us invisible.
National and regional policies and institutions – the CXC syllabi of which I spoke, and Mashramani, for instance – are largely African Guyanese/African Caribbean. This Indian exclusion from “national” life — whether discriminatory or self-imposed — has become such a structural norm of society that the Indian absence from a “national” forum was not surprising enough to invite comment, or be noted.
Much time was spent on questioning whether race is a social construct, and whether it matters at all. This bare-bones approach to Guyana’s conflict has the advantage of exposing it for what it is: a minority group that uses violence and discrimination against a larger population to try and wrest political power.
It brings the injustices of the situation into sharp focus, and provides another possible explanation for the Indian Guyanese absence, which could have been an instinctual act of self-preservation, especially since UG is generally viewed as an extension of the state apparatus. This being currently PNC-led, it is understandably seen as a preserve of historical prejudices against Indian Guyanese.
Despite its assurances, UG is not a comfortable space to address uncomfortable matters such as race for a majority of the population. This could be more than a public relations issue if the university does want to become relevant to productive national discussions.
The absence of Indian Guyanese from the forum was in and of itself a forceful reminder of the realities of race in Guyana.
